Sharing cardiology cases with students and doctors over the WWW: the Kasus-platform at the Heart Center Leipzig

Beside regular seminars the Department for Internal Medicine at the Heart Center Leipzig uses Bedside-Teaching and Problem-Oriented Learning (POL) to teach medical students. The advantages of those teaching methods consist in their ability to foster active student inquiry and critical thinking. To have the chance to record interesting cases and reuse them for later seminars and case-presentations, the department uses the PC/WWW-Platform KASUS (Elsner et al.) [1]. Acquiring a case and implementing it into the KASUS database for future use is achieved with a system consisting of a Palm-Computer (Palm V(R)), a digital Camera and a digital Stethoscope (Stethos(R)). Sharing the cases with other groups learning in the POL-format is possible with the KASUS ONLINE application and the WWW-based "Studentencafe", which allows students and doctors to share and discuss cases in different forums.